CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300

> Guywrote:
Refer to page 30 of your manual, section 3-7.
>
> This board's Optimal setting is actually underclocking your chip by
a large margin.
>
> In BIOS, change your Freq/Voltage from Optimal to Aggressive. This
will take you to 1.99 GHz, which is still a bit low for this chip's
rating. If that is stable, you can try to overclock the chip by
kicking it up to Turbo or Expert and playing with those settings.
>
> I left mine at Aggressive, because I am Chicken.
>
> In my experience, on most boards you can specify the frequency; I
guess Chaintech dumbed down the process with this one.
>
> There are no temperature sensor displays in BIOS either; too bad.


Hello, like so many participants on this and other forums, I have a
lot of issues with Chaintech, especially the 7NJL6 mobo heavily
promoted in recent months by online shops such as TigerDirect. I
bought the mobo bundled with the AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 333 MHz, Barton
Core from TD back in mid-September. It was nothing but trouble, with
frequent lock ups and blue screens. I spent probably 50 hours total
troubleshooting, swapping components, etc., and finally returned the
mobo to Chaintech for a replacement.

The replacement has been running stably, but with a puzzling and
annoying twist - POST reports MEMORY FREQUENCY of 100 MHz, with or
without DDR Enabled, and no matter what I do with BIOS settings or
how or where I install the memory in the three banks.

System info:

7NJL6 with AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 333 MHz FSB, Barton Core
Vantec iON 2 350W PSU
Windows Millenium, fully updated
3 sticks of Ultra DDR PC3200, 400 MHz
NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS
Chaintech 7.1 Channel PCI 24HT-S Sound Card
Seagate 120 GB EIDE HDD
Floppy
Samsung TSST H552B CD/DVD+/-RW

The really curious thing is, no matter what I do, the system's
performance scores using Symantec System Works 2004's bundled
Performance Tests (www.passmark.com) are the same: 230-240 Pass Mark;
710-730 Megaflops. The CPU runs at the correct, rated speed of 2158
MHz (1.3 x 166), with JP3 jumper at default setting (pins 1,2
jumpered for 133/166/200 MHz). I've found that the one BIOS setting
on this board that have direct, immediate effect on CPU speed is the
Gate A20 Option - it must be left at the default setting of FAST, not
Normal, otherwise the CPU speed drops to 1300 MHz.

I've tweaked and tried virtually every likely BIOS setting to try to
alter this immovable MEMORY FREQENCY of 100 MHz, with no success.
I've tried the Aggressive setting for the CPU INTERFACE options; SPD
vs. AUTO in the MEMORY FREQUENCY settings, and populated the memory
banks with 2 or 3 sticks at alternate positions. All of which produce
no difference in the 100 MHz memory frequency in POST, and negligible
differences in performance scores.

Guy, I too was "chicken" to go any further with "turbo" or "expert"
in selecting CPU Interface options, especially since I found that
with my particular 7NJL6 board, I can not select 200 MHz FSB - I've
tried it twice, and both times the system wouldn't boot at all and I
had to clear the CMOS and start over.

Is it possible that this Chaintech board has a double- or quad- pumped
FSB bus? If so, my system at least is running at 200 MHz minimum? The
Chaintech 7NJL6 User Guide is poorly written, with omissions, and
doesn't mention this item. The Chaintech web site and Tech Service is
not of much help either, although the latter has returned my emails
rather promptly. Its latest advice is for me to reflash the BIOS,
which I am not about to do as the risk/reward ratio is abysmal.

You, and several others on this board are obviously skilled and
knowledgeable with computers. I am hoping you can point to something
I may have missed. I confess to considerable ignorance on the subject
of changing computer speeds and timing - I've never tried overclocking
for that reason, especially since I am not a gamer.

Any advice or comment is extremely welcome and appreciated. Sorry for
a rather long post, but I wanted to be clear about what I want to
say.


 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300 

> Guywrote:
Refer to page 30 of your manual, section 3-7.
>
> This board's Optimal setting is actually underclocking your chip by
a large margin.
>
> In BIOS, change your Freq/Voltage from Optimal to Aggressive. This
will take you to 1.99 GHz, which is still a bit low for this chip's
rating. If that is stable, you can try to overclock the chip by
kicking it up to Turbo or Expert and playing with those settings.
>
> I left mine at Aggressive, because I am Chicken.
>
> In my experience, on most boards you can specify the frequency; I
guess Chaintech dumbed down the process with this one.
>
> There are no temperature sensor displays in BIOS either; too bad.


Hello, like so many participants on this and other forums, I have a
lot of issues with Chaintech, especially the 7NJL6 mobo heavily
promoted in recent months by online shops such as TigerDirect. I
bought the mobo bundled with the AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 333 MHz, Barton
Core from TD back in mid-September. It was nothing but trouble, with
frequent lock ups and blue screens. I spent probably 50 hours total
troubleshooting, swapping components, etc., and finally returned the
mobo to Chaintech for a replacement.

The replacement has been running stably, but with a puzzling and
annoying twist - POST reports MEMORY FREQUENCY of 100 MHz, with or
without DDR Enabled, and no matter what I do with BIOS settings or
how or where I install the memory in the three banks.

System info:

7NJL6 with AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 333 MHz FSB, Barton Core
Vantec iON 2 350W PSU
Windows Millenium, fully updated
3 sticks of Ultra DDR PC3200, 400 MHz
NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS
Chaintech 7.1 Channel PCI 24HT-S Sound Card
Seagate 120 GB EIDE HDD
Floppy
Samsung TSST H552B CD/DVD+/-RW

The really curious thing is, no matter what I do, the system's
performance scores using Symantec System Works 2004's bundled
Performance Tests (www.passmark.com) are the same: 230-240 Pass Mark;
710-730 Megaflops. The CPU runs at the correct, rated speed of 2158
MHz (1.3 x 166), with JP3 jumper at default setting (pins 1,2
jumpered for 133/166/200 MHz). I've found that the one BIOS setting
on this board that have direct, immediate effect on CPU speed is the
Gate A20 Option - it must be left at the default setting of FAST, not
Normal, otherwise the CPU speed drops to 1300 MHz.

I've tweaked and tried virtually every likely BIOS setting to try to
alter this immovable MEMORY FREQENCY of 100 MHz, with no success.
I've tried the Aggressive setting for the CPU INTERFACE options; SPD
vs. AUTO in the MEMORY FREQUENCY settings, and populated the memory
banks with 2 or 3 sticks at alternate positions. All of which produce
no difference in the 100 MHz memory frequency in POST, and negligible
differences in performance scores.

Guy, I too was "chicken" to go any further with "turbo" or "expert"
in selecting CPU Interface options, especially since I found that
with my particular 7NJL6 board, I can not select 200 MHz FSB - I've
tried it twice, and both times the system wouldn't boot at all and I
had to clear the CMOS and start over.

Is it possible that this Chaintech board has a double- or quad- pumped
FSB bus? If so, my system at least is running at 200 MHz minimum? The
Chaintech 7NJL6 User Guide is poorly written, with omissions, and
doesn't mention this item. The Chaintech web site and Tech Service is
not of much help either, although the latter has returned my emails
rather promptly. Its latest advice is for me to reflash the BIOS,
which I am not about to do as the risk/reward ratio is abysmal.

You, and several others on this board are obviously skilled and
knowledgeable with computers. I am hoping you can point to something
I may have missed. I confess to considerable ignorance on the subject
of changing computer speeds and timing - I've never tried overclocking
for that reason, especially since I am not a gamer.

Any advice or comment is extremely welcome and appreciated. Sorry for
a rather long post, but I wanted to be clear about what I want to
say.


 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300 

Apologies to all for the double post - I thought the first one got
stuck.
 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300 

Bill,

I just bought a 7NJL6 with the XP 3000, 2 X 512MB Viking, and an eVGA
256 MB AGP card. I put it in a Coolermaster Centurion case today.


I am installing drivers and updates now; however, I encountered the
same problem this morning with the 200 MHz bus. My system is
currently reporting 1300 MHz, and I have cleared the CMOS four times.
I am running a 100MHz bus setting right now.

I am not touching the default settings again until I figure out what
is going on. I am also soliciting comments and advice (especially
from Uddarts). I will also keep you posted via this newsegroup on
anything I find.

I spent several days troubleshooting this system in an old case --
this planned upgrade turned into a new build when I decided to buy
this Coolermaster case. It turns out the system would not boot
because of a bad PS2 mouse. I was really surprised by that, but at
least the system is running now.

Ud, I decided to go with another 7N. It's just going to be an email
server and home office PC for my wife anyway.... The success story is
this new Coolermaster case from CompUSA.

Thanks,
 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300 

welcome back guy! you scared me. i thought you had problems too but you learned from the other build.

i'll see if i can get you and bill the best results from your setups. remember your running an eco chaintech board and memory. you have no voltage adjustment so your limited. i'm not a tech so i can't you real answers just some suggestions.

bill, i'll speak to you and guy you just follow along but just put an imaginary stick of ram in.

remember you want to run the cpu and mem in sync/1:1/100%

1 stick in single slot & 1 in double. now go into the bios and set the following.

in the frequency control:

sys perf: expert
fsb freq: 166
cpu: optimal (for now should be able to change to aggressive later)
mem freq: 100%
mem timings: optimal

check timings with this and make note.

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

reboot and place the 3rd stick in. you shouldn't have to reset bios/cmos. i have a 7nif4 and just tried it.

now if it doesn't work let me know what timings cpuz gave you and i can guess on what timings to manually set them at.

also run this program on each stick. if they pass then try running it on all three.

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

you may have a stick that isn't up to specs.

when the two of you get a stable system, you can run this program and slowly up the fsb(2 at a time) from windows.

http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php

run this to test speed and the following improvements.

http://superpi.radeonx.com/

when superpi fails back off a couple of fsb and run this.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

under options/torture test

once you find a stable fsb using clockgen then you should be able to set it in the bios.

good luck!


ud
 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300 

Ok, here is an update. I do not yet know what is causing this bizarre
behavior.

First, I have the machine running at 2.167 GHz. I accomplished this
as follows:

1. I installed the latest drivers from the Chaintech website*.

2. After rebooting, I entered the BIOS and set the CPU freq to 200.
(I admit this was a stretch, since my CPU should use 166.) The
restart failed, so I powered down and pulled the CMOS jumper. I then
powered up, and got an error request telling me the CMOS had changed.
(Note: This had not happened before; previously I had set my system
to Aggressive, but this time I left it at Optimal....)

3. I entered BIOS and reset the CPU freq to 166. This time it
successfully rebooted, and told me the CPU had been changed (!) and
asked me to go into CMOS to correct the boot drive order. I ignored
this with an F1 key and the system booted right into Windows with a
dramatic speed increase. The system and Belarc Advisor both verify
the speed increase, but Belarc reports 2.15 while the system reports
2.16. The correct value should be 2.167, and I assume it is the
actual value being reported, with rounding errors in the utilities.


I will now run the system for 24 hours with Speedfan monitoring
temperature.

*OBTW, I installed all of the same drivers on my other build, a 7NJL6
/ 2900 configuration, and it is running fine as well.

I will check in Wednesday.
 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300 

well yeah!!!!!!!!! 2600mhz would be a stretch. when you try clockgen you'll see the fsb #s are go into decimals.

so that board does have a temp sensor. i've asked that question a dozen times.

ud
 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300 

Update: My new system - 7NJL6 (BIOS v. 2) with XP 3000 / 333MHz and
512MB x 2 of Viking 8/3/3 memory - is running smoothly under the
optimized defaults.

Thanks for the help!
 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300 

tah-dah!!!!!

great and have fun!


ud
 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300 

The memory CAS latency is 3; BIOS reports 200 MHz memory frequency.

I have the memory frequency set to auto.

This is an XP 3000/333 MHz chip. I was initially concerned with a
possible mismatch between the 333MHz Barton and the PC 3200 memory,
but the system is working fine.

Life intervened; I still have not been able to kick my wide & kids
off the two PC's long enough to compare BIOS v.1 to BIOS v.2, but I
will get there soon.

I guess someone will have to experiment with registered RAM; all of my
sticks are unbuffered.

Thanks,
 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300 

Sounds like you are definitely safe on the clocking. If you like to
tinker, it might be interesting what performance tests say and
compare to running ram at 333. It is likely you could run at 2.5 CAS
at that speed. Seems strange that auto kicks you to 400 for RAM. I
and others were under the impression that would match ram speed to
the FSB. I know that is what happens here and SPD pushes it to 400,
even though it is only 266. Weird, huh?

This new info on RAM is stirring questions, and even though some claim
they are running 3 sticks in dual channel, I have to wonder how close
they have checked. I have no way with one stick to know if dual
channel becomes a bios setting or it is auto the moment slot 1 &
3 are filled. Bios might not be trained to roll out of dual channel
with third stick or at least to say so. And looking at the memory
management in device manager, it appears the real use takes place
because of those associated drivers, but what will windows do under
the third stick. Many utilities will likely report just what the bios
says and it might take special effort to find if windows is actually
operating in dual channel with three sticks.
Children are a sure fire reason to bullet proof a system. I heard
Murphy is a first cousin of children.
 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300 

> nthums1wrote:
Sounds like you are definitely safe on the clocking. If you like to
tinker, it might be interesting what performance tests say and
compare to running ram at 333. It is likely you could run at 2.5 CAS
at that speed. Seems strange that auto kicks you to 400 for RAM. I
and others were under the impression that would match ram speed to
the FSB. I know that is what happens here and SPD pushes it to 400,
even though it is only 266. Weird, huh?
>
> ...Many utilities will likely report just what the bios says and it
might take special effort to find if windows is actually operating in
dual channel with three sticks.
> Children are a sure fire reason to bullet proof a system. I heard
Murphy is a first cousin of children.

I reviewed my BIOS on both systems. This is what the systems are
reporting:

1. 7NJL6/2900 (333), BIOS v1, CPU frequency set to 200MHz; 2x PNY
512MB PC2700, CAS latency 2.5, memory frequency 166MHz. (Note I had
previously reported the CAS latency on this system to be 3, I was
wrong.) This system is extremely stable.

2. 7NJL6/3000 (333), BIOS v2, CPU frequency set to 166MHz; 2x Viking
512MB PC3200, CAS latency 3, memory frequency 200MHz.

-I tried setting the CAS latency to 2.5 by setting memory control to
auto. It crashed out my system after three reboots. I set it back
to 3 and the system booted.

-I will try again to set the CAS to 2.5. I am afraid that if I mess
around too much I will have to crawl back in and reset CMOS again. I
am still not convinced this configuration is completely stable. (I
have to find a jumper with a convenient handle for this board's
CMOS!)

Thanks,
 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300 

a bit curious how you managed to get that 2900 (333) to run FSB400. Is
there some setting available in that v1 bios not present in v2?
Do you have the part number of that cpu?

The obvious thing would be to swap memory in machines so you can run
the PC3200 with the 400FSB.
 >> Stay informed about: CT-7NJL6 w/ barton 3000+ only running at 1300